Facilitator - Ahimsa Collective - Oakland

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Department: Managed Services Client - The Ahimsa Collective

The Ahimsa Collective supports healing, builds safety, and challenges punitive thinking and practices. We work directly in our locality and support justice-based movements through training and technical assistance, opportunities to convene, and grantmaking to organizations doing similar work nationwide. For more information, visit The Ahimsa Collective.

This Facilitator 3 position is for the Healing Pathways program at The Ahimsa Collective. Healing Pathways runs in-prison groups called Realize, Empathize, and PATH, the Restorative Justice in the Community (RJC) program, Victim Offender Dialogues (VOD), and survivor support groups. The Facilitator 3 will be responsible for facilitation and curriculum development and may occasionally be asked to serve as a trainer of new facilitators.

This position is not to exceed 1040 hours a year. This position is based on the availability of grants and may terminate on 12/31/2025.

Skillfully facilitate healing and accountability processes that include but are not limited to groups and one-on-one dialogues from start to finish. Tasks include managing data tracking, organizing meetings with co-facilitators and participants, mentoring apprentice facilitators, moving processes along, preparing for final meetings, and creating closure for participants.

Demonstrate in-depth knowledge of the Realize, Empathize, PATH and/or equivalent in-prison curriculum and the capacity to teach the concepts and exercises to participants. And/or have previously taken a lead role in facilitating 2-3 VODs or RJC processes with The Ahimsa Collective or its equivalent in another setting.

Demonstrate a comprehensive and in-depth understanding of restorative and transformative justice and trauma healing principles and their application to working with survivors and responsible parties.

Establish trusting relationships and rapport with participants, and demonstrate the capacity to create a safe environment for participants.

Foster agency and uplift each participant's voice. Skillfully identify and reflect participants' feelings, facilitate deeper and more complex processes, and constructively engage conflict when it arises.

Observe interpersonal or group dynamics and make appropriate suggestions.

Have a strong foundation of how power and oppression work in both interpersonal and group dynamics. Understand how culture, race, gender, age, ability, gender identity, intersectionality, and worldviews, inform a participant’s lived experience.

Understand one's own positionality and demonstrate the ability to lead an effective process without being overly controlling.

Identify and integrate personal narratives regarding past history while maintaining professional boundaries. Facilitators should have significantly processed and integrated their own lived experiences to avoid projecting them onto the group.

Critically self-reflect on one's own capacity as a facilitator, articulate those reflections, and remain open to growth and feedback from participants, colleagues, and supervisors.

Communicate well and consistently with other facilitators and Ahimsa Collective staff through phone, email, text, and in-person.

Receive and offer constructive feedback to further learning and capacity as facilitators.

Organize meetings with co-facilitators and other Ahimsa Collective staff.

Attend monthly facilitator meetings.

Timely reporting of hours worked, invoicing, and liability waivers, as well as completing other administrative tasks as assigned.

If assigned as an in-prison facilitator, must not be absent from 2 or more sessions. Absences for 2 or more sessions may lead to termination.

Adapt current curricular content to fit the needs of different contexts, situations, and groups.

Edit out older or outdated material.

Co-create new restorative and transformative justice curricula as needed.

Stay well-read and current on new pedagogy and curricular content of concepts like healing, shame, forgiveness, grief, accountability, sexual harm, addiction, intersectionality, systemic oppression, and restorative and transformative justice relevant to our work.

Co-design and co-deliver high-quality training in various restorative and transformative justice and trauma healing modalities.

Work closely with The Ahimsa Collective staff and co-facilitators to implement training.

Work with training host organizations to meet the needs of the participants.

Co-create outreach material for training, interview participants, and track participants from start to finish of training.

Assist in training logistics: picking up food, setting up, cleaning up, getting supplies, calling absent participants, copying training materials, and other logistical tasks.

Complete post-training follow-up as needed: surveys to participants,…